John Cage's Studies with Schoenberg

Michael Hicks
American Music, Vol. 8, No. 2. (Summer, 1990), pp. 125-140.
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MICHAEL HICKS

John Cage's Studies

with ~ c h o e n b e r ~

Arnold Schoenberg once remarked that the sole reward of a teacher

came in taking credit for his pupils' successes.' Schoenberg's most
renowned American pupil, however, was one for whose successes he
apparently never claimed credit: John Cage. At one time commentators
saw clearly the link between the two men's music.2 But the radical
directions that Cage's career has taken in the last four decades have
obscured the connection to his teacher. Cage has nevertheless endeavored to reconcile his work with Schoenberg's training, insisting that
through it all he has been faithful to Schoenberge3Indeed, Cage's friend
Morton Feldman has suggested that Cage's work has been the logical extension of Schoenberg's-a lifelong expression of "developing
~ariation."~
In the more than fifty years since Cage studied with Schoenberg a
number of problems in understanding those studies have arisen. First,
Cage's (and others') recollections of that period have been fragmentary
and scattered. Second, the chronologies dealing with Cage in the 1930s
sometimes conflict. Third, there has been a lack of contemporary documentation for those studies. Fourth, Schoenberg himself was more or
less silent on the subject; his attitude toward Cage has been relegated
to a single remark, widely circulated by Cage, to the effect that Schoenberg came to consider Cage his most important Amercan pupil and
"an inventor of geniu~."~
This paper attempts to bring together information from relevant reminiscences, to resolve some of the chronological discrepancies, to present some previously unpublished docuMichael Hicks is an assistant professor of music theory and composition at
Brigham Young University.
American Music Summer 1990
O 1990 by the Board of Trustees of the University of Illinois

126

Hicks

mentation (includng letters written by Cage during his studies with

Schoenberg), and to clarify Schoenberg's views on Cage.
Henry Cowell was regarded by many young composers as a kind
of patron saint of the self-taught; that is probably why Cage sent Cowell
some early pieces that he had composed without a teacher. Cowell
programmed one of these pieces for a New Music Society workshop
in San Francisco, but declined to publish any of them, and encouraged
Cage to get some formal training6 That year, 1933, Cowell deemed
Schoenberg the greatest living composer, and Cage not only told Cowell
that he wished to study with the master, who would be immigrating
to the United States that fall, he also asked Cowell to help him get a
scholarship to do that. Cage writes in a 1934 letter that Cowell was
"rather vague" in reply but urged him to approach Adolph Weiss in
New Y ~ r k . ~
There are several reasons why Cowell would send Cage to Weiss
instead of directly to Schoenberg. Weiss was widely regarded as America's most important exponent of Schoenberg's technique, in part because he has attended the latter's Berlin Academy lectures in 1926.'
He had recently published "The Lyceum of Schoenberg" in Modern
Music, a seminal article which explained Schoenberg's methods. He
had also translated Schoenberg's "Problems of Harmony" for the same
journal and was preparing a translation of the H~rmonielehre.~
Moreover, Schoenberg formally asked Weiss in November 1933 to become
his assistant, to enroll the students who, through lack of training or
money, were not ready to study with him.1 Because Weiss commanded
only a fraction of Schoenberg's price, he could accommodate Depression-stricken American students who wanted to acquire Schoenberg's
techniques. And he was known to be as lenient as Schoenberg in
collecting fees."
In his letter of application to Weiss, Cage maintained that he was
willing to work hard to acquire the musical discipline Schoenberg
demanded, adding that he had heard stories of "the disappointments
of 'modernists' who have wanted to study with Schoenberg, hoping
to find in him someone who would 'sympathize.' "I2 As Cage recollects,
Weiss seems to have used Schoenberg's "Lyceum" principles as the
basis for correcting the weaknesses in Cage's music, especially those
involving melodic construction: Weiss "impressed upon me the importance of reserving tones for beginnings and endings of lines so that
these points would have freshness. Also the business of having one
high point and one low point for a line, and not repeating these
reaches."13 Cage also studied harmony with Weiss, "without liking it
or feeling any natural inclination to use it."14 Cage recalls that he wrote
no pieces under Weiss's direction, but did enlist Weiss's help in com-

John Cage's Studies with Schoenberg

127

posing a twelve-tone allemande for solo clarinet that Cage would later
show to S~hoenberg.'~
Cage undoubtedly planned to study with Schoenberg in Boston or
New York as soon as Weiss considered him ready, but Schoenberg
moved to Hollywood in the fall of 1934 to improve his health. This
proved opportune for Cage because he could return to his old environs
in southern California and still study with the master. Yet despite his
studies with Weiss, Cage felt unprepared for Schoenberg: "Although
I am not really prepared for this class, I manage to keep my ears open
and absorb what I can."'6
In October 1934 Schoenberg began a class in his Hollywood home
for students who could not afford his private lesson fees.17Cage recalls
attending this class, but he is mistaken. He has referred to it as a
counterpoint class, when all other sources agree that its topic was
Beethoven's C-minor variation^.'^ Pauline Alderman, who helped organize the class, distinctly recalls that Cage did not attend Schoenberg's
class sessions until after the holidays (i.e., in January 1935).19Indeed,
Cage did not even travel to California until December 1934, when he
rode with Cowell from New Y ~ r k Moreover,
.~~
Cage's letter to Weiss
dated March 30, 1935 clearly suggests that the analysis class he was
then attending-the one Alderman recalls him attending-was the
this class somewhere between
.~~
first he had had with S c h ~ e n b e r gIn
twenty-five and forty students studied Bach's Art of the Fugue and WellTempered Claviet; Brahms's Third and Fourth Symphonies, and, upon
the insistence of the students, Schoenberg's own Third Quartet. Although Cage, like many other students, came to Schoenberg chiefly
for the purpose of learning twelve-tone technique from him, the several
weeks devoted to the Third Quartet apparently constituted the only
time that Cage heard Schoenberg treat the subject at all. Indeed, Cage
recalls, on the one occasion he asked Schoenberg directly about twelvetone technique, Schoenberg replied, "that's none of your business."22
Cage generally disliked the course. He wrote to Weiss in April 1935:
With Schoenberg I have remained apart. Although in each one of
the class sessions I have "gleaned" something extremely valuable,
I have felt disturbed fundamentally by the mediocrity induced by
the class members. Including myself, for it seems to me that I am
dull at present. Last week Schoenberg asked me after the class if
I would come to see him. Perhaps this would lead to working with
him privately. But I hesitate to think so.23
Although gratified that "Schoenberg begins to show an interest in me,"
Cage wanted to resume studies with Weiss. He felt that he had progressed faster with Weiss than he now did and he complained that the

128

Hicks

discipline he had gained in New York had "fallen somewhat to pieces"

under Schoenberg. Weiss urged Cage to remain with Schoenberg, but
Cage repudiated even the idea of being "a Schoenberg pupil" because
"that designation is so cheap now that I am not interested in it; it is
being bandied about by all those whose ears are vacant passageways
for his
Acting on advice from Weiss, Cage determined to get "closer" to
Schoenberg, and made an appointment with him for May 1, from 3:30
Later that month he recounted the meeting
to 5:00 in the aftern~on.'~
to Weiss:
I decided, since you considered it best, to ask him point blank if
I might in any way continue my studies with him. He asked me
many questions,-about my work with you and before studying
with you. My answers showed him how very little I know,particularly with regard to the literature of string quartetts, symphonies, etc. He finally decided, however, to accept me in a class
in counterpoint which had already started, suggesting that, with
the aid of a George Tremblay, who is studying composition with
him, I might "make-up" what I had missed. He felt that what I
already know of Harmony, through you, would be sufficient for
the time being. His last words on this first occasion were: Now
you must think of nothing but music: and must work from six to
eight hours a dayeZ6
Later Cage elaborated on one particular portion of this meeting with
Schoenberg, the discussion of payment. Cage has quoted Schoenberg
as saying, "You probably can't afford my price," to which Cage replied,
"You don't need to mention it because I don't have any money." Upon
this Schoenberg asked, "Will you devote your life to music?" and Cage
promised that he
Schoenberg then agreed to teach Cage without further pay. Cage has insisted that "he wouldn't have done it, if
I hadn't promised."28 But it should be remembered that Schoenberg
often taught students without pay, even if they had little musical background, feeling that the satisfaction derived from initiating beginners
was a greater reward than any fee. Even if they could not "digest"
what he taught them, Schoenberg explained, "it will damage them less
to study with me than with a poorer teacher."29
It is difficult to tell which of the eight classes Schoenberg taught at
USC and UCLA during 1935-36 Cage actually attended, since he did
not formally enroll in or pay for any of them. Cage claims he attended
"all" of Schoenberg's classes at USC and UCLA during those years.30
Cage perhaps means that he attended all of Schoenberg's courses, of
which there was some duplication in 1935-36. In any case, judging
from his scattered reminiscences, Cage seems to have attended at least

John Cage's Studies with Schoenberg

129

one of each of Schoenberg's courses in composition, harmony, and

analysis, and two of his counterpoint classes.
In his published reminiscences Cage portrays Schoenberg as an intimidating but occasionally kindly professor. He recalls that Schoenberg
berated a girl in an analysis class for not playing Beethoven well enough.
When she explained that she had just had a tooth pulled, Schoenberg
replied, "Do you have to have a tooth pulled out in order to make
mistakes?"31 On another occasion Schoenberg asked the class to take
a secret vote on whether a certain student should remain in the class,
though he smiled and told them in the student's absence to "be sure
you keep her."32When Schoenberg complained that the students were
not working hard enough, the students replied that there were only
twenty-four hours in a day, to which the teacher rejoined, "there are
as many hours in the day as you put into it."33Generally, Cage recalls,
Schoenberg did all he could to keep his students in "a constant state
of failure."34Only once does Cage recall Schoenberg speaking well of
the fugues his students had produced, an occasion which left them in
a state of euphoria.35For his part, Schoenberg repeatedly complained
to friends about how poorly prepared his American students were, and
he found it hard to believe that many of them were already employed
as teachers. He was also "embarrassed" at having to give students
letter grades-a practice to which he was unaccustomed-and characterized the USC summer classes as "terrible."36
Cage recalls that during the courses at USC and UCLA Schoenberg
never once praised or even encouraged him in his studies.37Schoenberg
steadfastly refused to look at Cage's compositions, and he had to send
them to Weiss for help.38When Cage brought his teacher the allemande
that he had written with Weiss, Schoenberg reportedly "took a cursory
look and asked: 'What is an Allemande?' "39 On another occasion, when
Cage showed Schoenberg a long fugue subject, Schoenberg dismissed
it with a phrase apparently derived from a private joke between him
and Mahler: "Put it in your next symphony,"40 When Cage broke
partwriting rules Schoenberg complained, yet if he followed them too
strictly Schoenberg would urge him to take more libertie~.~'
And when
Cage commented on other students' work in class, he recalls, Schoenberg ridiculed him.42
Yet despite Schoenberg's harshness, Cage revered his teacher and
defended him against insult.43Only once did Cage find Schoenberg
intolerable. Schoenberg prided himself in daunting his students: "I
consider it as one of my merits that I did not encourage composing . . . [in that I treated] hundreds of pupils in a manner that showed
I did not think too much of their creative ability."44Thus, during one
of the USC composition classes (probably in summer 1936), Schoenberg
told the students that his goal in teaching them was "to make it

130

Hicks

impossible for you to write music." At this Cage renewed his vow to
devote his life to composition; but from that moment on, he recalls,
he began to revolt against Schoenberg's methods, if not against the
man himself .45
Cage apparently quit his studies with Schoenberg after attending
Schoenberg's first harmony class at UCLA. This class frustrated almost
everyone involved. According to one account, fifty-six students enrolled, mostly inexperienced freshman. The basic text, the Harmonielehre, was unavailable in English and even a German copy cost twentyeight dollars, an enormous amount for students in 1936.46Cage found
the course particularly troubling. Experiencing pressures at home (he
had recently married and needed to work more for his father), he had
little interest in writing the modulating chord "sentences" that Schoenberg required. In a letter to Weiss apparently written while Cage was
attending this course, he wrote that he was disappointed in his work,
and that "I cannot get away from my own consciousness of having
done nothing of value. . . . I have already practically condemned myA year
self. I begin to feel that I 'tamper' with music, ~nrightfully."~~
earlier, harmony had been the one area in which Schoenberg considered
Cage competent. But Cage claims that, in the UCLA course, he told
Schoenberg repeatedly that he had no "feeling" for harmony. Schoenberg finally told Cage that a composer with no feeling for harmony
would necessarily always encounter an obstacle, a wall through which
he could not pass. Cage replied with the now well-known remark born
of the mixture of determination and resignation evident in his confessions to Weiss: he would devote his life, then, to "beating my head
against that wall."48
After spending several more months in Los Angeles, Cage and his
wife Xenia left for work in Seattle in September 1937.49There Cage
wrote that future methods of composition must bear "a definite relation
to Schoenberg's twelve-tone system" as well as to contemporary methods of writing percussion music.50In 1942 he expanded this idea in
Modern Music, saying that, since the music of the future would contain
many kinds of sounds (because it would be produced by new forms
of instruments) a "sound row" could contain any number of contrasting
elements. Because of the variety of these sounds, duration would replace pitch as the basis of c o m p ~ s i t i o n . ~ ~
Influenced by Cowell's interest in Asian music, Cage began to study
Indian music in the mid-1940s, and began immediately to find parallels
between it and Schoenberg's music. In a 1946 article Cage writes, "The
use of a different twelve-tone row for each composition is similar to
the Hindu use of a special raga, or scale, for particular improvisations"
and proceeds to elaborate on the dubious similarities. He also compares
Schoenberg's rules of resolution in counterpoint to those in Hindu

John Cage's Studies with Schoenberg

131

music, and even suggests an affinity between Schoenbergian theory

and Indian music because the latter favors "minor" sounding scales
and "interestingly enough, Schoenberg places unusual emphasis on
the minor scale in his teaching of co~nterpoint."~~
But even as he assimilated his studies with Schoenberg into his new
musical language, Cage continued to distance himself from his former
teacher, asserting that his own music went further than Schoenberg's
in the proper path of modernism. He defended his unpitched percussion
music by saying that "atonal music was excellent in theory, but there
were no atonal instruments to play it."53Privately he complained that,
in Peter Yates's words, "he could see no reason why Schoenberg, having
freed music from tonality, should not have gone the entire way and
freed music from its 12 notes. If every tone is equal to every other,
then any controllable sound is equal to any other or to any tone."54
Schoenberg had also lost a sense of freedom in his composition: he
"analyzes and fragmentizes his music, so that he seems with Freud to
be a founding father of today's cult of the neurosis."55 In 1948 Cage
wrote that Schoenberg had "provided no structural means, only a
method-the twelve-tone system-the nonstructural character of which
forces its composer and his followers continually to make negative
steps: He has always to avoid those combinations of sound that would
refer too banally to harmony and tonality." Cage explained that the
composers who concerned themselves with the things that "really
matter" (Webern, Satie, and, by implication, Cage) used duration as
the means to structure. The music of Schoenberg and Stravinsky had
only "length and impressiveness" to its credit.56A year later Cage
broadened his critique, indicting certain European twelve-tone composers (Jelinek, Hartmann, Searle, Apostel, et al.) for using the twelvetone technique out of nothing more than "a European weakness for
tradition." These composers displayed "a possible lack of faith in the
new dispensation" by using twelve-tone techniques with mere forms
from the past (e.g., allemande^).^^
Later, Cage distilled his compositional divergence from Schoenberg
into two issues: "variation" and "structure." Schoenberg explained in
1931 that variation was the basis of composition, that "whatever happens in a piece of music is nothing but the endless reshaping of a basic
shape."58 New elements in a piece must be made from the alteration
of something already given; for comprehensibility's sake, "new" material must always be derived from existing material. He explained this
principle on the first day of his USC summer composition classes. As
one student recorded that day in his notes, Schoenberg presented his
idea in this way:
Elements must be preserved but succession may be changed.

Hicks

132

ABCD ABC

but not

ACDB etc.

(something new)59

Cage felt that, to the contrary, the preservation of elements in a variation

cancelled out its potential for contrast. While he was attracted to the
idea of repetition as such for unifying a composition, he insisted that
newness should be accomplished by introducing "something other which
cannot be cancelled out."60
The eclecticism that Cage displayed in according equal merit to all
sounds that could be put in a piece violated some of Schoenberg's most
basic compositional tenets. As early as 1927 Schoenberg rejected the
joining of disparate elements for "musical" effect, using rather circular
reasoning: "Logically, we can only join things that are related, directly
or indirectly. In a piece of music I cannot establish a relation between
a tone and, let us say, an eraser; simply because no musical relation
e~ists."~'
He restated this idea to his summer students at USC: "You
can contrast in music only things which are related-'You cannot join
Cage opposed these tenets, feeling that the property
tones apples.'
of sound (or potential for making sound) was enough of a commonality
between elements.
Cage attributes to Schoenberg the definition of "structure" as the
"division of a whole into parts."63 This language is akin to Weiss's
translation of Schoenberg's ideas in "Problems of Harmony": "The
effort of the composer is solely for the purpose of making the idea
comprehensible to the listener. For the latter's sake the artist must divide
the whole into its parts, into surveyable parts, and then add them
together again into a complete whole now conceivable in spite of
hampering details."64Schoenberg observed that tonality was the most
successful means of accomplishing these ends, and that if one abandoned tonality one must supplant its means of achieving structure. For
Schoenberg the solution was the twelve-tone "basic set." But, perhaps
because he had not learned from Schoenberg how it might actually be
used, Cage believed the twelve-tone series incapable of providing more
than a note-to-note procedure and criticized the method on that basis.
Schoenberg's opinion of Cage's musical exploits from 1937 to 1951
remains enigmatic. Schoenberg thought well enough of Cage to include
Cage's address in his 1937 diary list of addresses, a distinction accorded
to few of his
But Cowell felt that Schoenberg was disappointed
in Cage because Cage was "more interested in [Schoenberg's] philosophy than in acquiring his technique^.^^ No evidence of correspondence
between Schoenberg and Cage has so far turned up, nor does Schoenberg's legacy contain any scores by Cage. One may suppose that
Schoenberg was aware of Cage's career through correspondence with

John Cage's Studies with Schoenberg

133

Weiss, through local performances, and through published reviews, of

which there are two lengthy examples in issues of Modem Music that
Schoenberg owned.67Yet, according to Cage, Schoenberg refused all
invitations to attend his percussion concerts in Los Angeles. Moreover,
Cage wrote in 1940 that when he showed Schoenberg a New Music
Society publication of percussion music, Schoenberg called it "nonSchoenberg appears never to have considered Cage either a composer
or a notable former student. In his list of characteristic American composers (1945) he names as well-known composers Harris, Copland,
Sessions, Schuman, Diamond, Piston, Cowell, Weiss, Gerald Strang,
Louis Gruenberg, and Anis Fuelihan, and as lesser-known composers
his former students Dika Newlin and Lou H a r r i ~ o nIn
. ~1948
~ he wrote
that "of the hundreds of my pupils, only a few have become composers. . . . At least I have heard only of these": Berg, Webern, Eisler,
Weiss, Strang, Gerhard, Karl Rankl, Winfried Zillig, Nikos Skalkottas,
and Norbert von Hannenheim.70When in 1950 he briefly discussed
his better students, Cage's name does not appear among the twentyeight he mention^.^'
What then of the idea that Schoenberg pronounced Cage "an inventor of genius"? The source of this statement is Peter Yates, the west
coast entrepreneur, who was a friend and patron of both Schoenberg
and Cage. The statement apparently was first published in Yates's 1960
review of two John Cage recordings. He writes there, without further
comment: "Schoenberg said to me of Cage: 'He is not a composer, but
an inventor-of genius.' "72 Seven years later, in his Twentieth Century
Music, Yates explained:
At our last meeting I asked [Schoenberg] about his disciples and
students. In reply, he spoke only of John Cage, without any prompting and indeed to my astonishment, since Cage had ceased studying with him rather abruptly and had strongly and publicly criticized the twelve-tone method. Schoenberg said of Cage: "He is
not a composer, but an inventor-of genius." The statement summarizes in few words Schoenberg's awareness of what had been
happening in and to music during the last decade of his life.73
According to Yates's widow, this "last meeting" took place two or three
weeks before Schoenberg's death.74But in an undated letter written
sometime after 1968, Yates mentioned that Schoenberg made the remark in question "several years before his death," making his judgment
on Cage far from the near-deathbed repentance it has been made to
Cage has repeated an embellished Yates's anecdote at least since the
early 1960s and it has appeared in several surveys of contemporary

134

Hicks

music and books about Cage.76Since at least 1973 Cage has contradicted
Yates and his own earlier statements. In a letter to Dieter Schnebel
Cage writes that in the late 1940s Yates showed him copies of some
correspondence between Schoenberg and Hermann Scherchen and that,
in answer to Scherchen's inquiry as to whether Schoenberg had had
any good students in America, Schoenberg replied, "Yes, one," and
named Cage. Then, says Cage, Schoenberg added that, of course, Cage
was not a composer but an "inventor of genius." Referring to this
purported letter Cage adds, "That was my diploma."77More recently,
Cage has said that Yates wrote him a letter telling of a conversation
between Schoenberg and Scherchen, and that this was the source of
the prono~ncement.~'
The actual source for these varied accounts appears to be a letter
from Yates to Cage dated August 8, 1953. In this letter, Yates wrote
that he had "planned several times" to tell Cage of his last conversation
with Schoenberg, but always forgot to. In that conversation,
I made an effort to find out how much he knew about the work
of his self-appointed disciples, especially those in NY. He knew
nothing of them, their work, or their names, except his few elder
friends, not even about his pupils. Until he thought of you, and
at once he brightened and exclaimed, to this effect, "An inventor!
An inventor of genius. Not a composer, no, not a composer, but
an inventor. A great mind."79
This source raises as many questions as it seems to answer. What
was Schoenberg's state of mind? Why, after years of promoting the
work of his longtime students and neglecting Cage would Schoenberg
suddenly "know nothing . . . about his pupils" except for Cage? Since
Yates championed Cage's work, did he in fact lead Schoenberg to
"think" of Cage in this discussion? How closely does Yates's reconstructed quotation reflect Schoenberg's actual words? And if we assume
that the conversation happened as Yates described it, why would
Schoenberg refuse to consider Cage a "composer"?
This last, most important question is the easiest to answer. The term
"composer" was one Schoenberg always held in special reserve: a
composer, he wrote, was "a man who lives in music and expresses
everything, serious or not, sound or superficial, by means of music,
because it is his native language."'O During their earlier association, it
became clear to both Cage and Schoenberg that in Schoenberg's sense
music was not Cage's "native language," if for no other reason than
that Cage confessed to having "no feeling for harmony." Although
Schoenberg understood Cage's love for sounds in their own right, he
complained in 1941 that "today, sound is seldom associated with idea"

John Cage's Studies with Schoenberg

135

and was being used "as a screen behind which the absence of ideas
will not be n~ticeable."~'
If Schoenberg declared Cage "not a composer,"
it was perhaps because Cage so strongly differed with him over "variation" and "structure," matters concerning which he refused to bend.
Cage, an inventor's son, gleefully accepted Schoenberg's appellation
of inventor: "As far as I was concerned I never really meant to be
anything else."s2 He further explained in 1982 that inventing, not composing, was really his "proper function in society."s3 And when Daniel
Charles asked Cage just what he, the non-composer, had invented,
Cage sardonically wrote, "music, (not compo~ition)."~~
Nevertheless, Cage continues to link his work to Schoenberg, saying
repeatedly that he has spent his life composing (or inventing) music
because of his May 1935 vow to Schoenberg. Defending himself against
those who question the integrity of that vow, Cage has pled many
times that he remains "faithful" to Schoenberg even in his passionate
study of Zen, experiments with typography, chess playing, and mushroom collecting: "You can stay with music while you're hunting mushrooms. It's a curious idea perhaps, but a mushroom grows for such a
short time and if you happen to come across it when it's fresh it's like
coming upon a sound which also lives a short time."85
Cage also insists that he has been faithful to Schoenberg in using
chance operation^.^^ Faithful in method, he says, because he uses chance
operations (e.g., those of the 1 Ching) strictly and systematically, as he
believes Schoenberg would have wanted. Faithful in spirit, he says,
because of a question that Schoenberg once posed to his counterpoint
class. After the students had exhausted all possible solutions to a contrapuntal problem, Schoenberg asked them what was the principle
underlying all the solutions. Cage had no answer to this until forty
years later. Having contemplated the question all his life since, Cage
concluded in the mid 1970s that the real answer was "the question
that we ask." What Schoenberg really wanted for his students, Cage
believes, was that they not be satisfied with mechanical solutions, but
continually search for underlying principles. Cage has pronounced
himself true to Schoenberg's wishes.
What one discerns in Cage's early letters to Weiss has resurfaced in
recent years: humility both toward his teachers and toward musical
tradition itself. The same modesty that underlay Schoenberg's occasional pontifications can be felt in Cage's. As Schoenberg did, Cage
continues to insist upon the rightfulness of his work, to legitimize it
by appealing to its genealogy: as Brahms is to Schoenberg, Schoenberg
is to Cage. This affirmation of artistic lineage-and hence of the continuity in variation- may be, in the end, the principal legacy of Cage's
studies with Schoenberg.

NOTES

1. As quoted by John Cage in "Mosaic," Kenyon Review 27 (Summer 1965): 537.

2. Virgil Thomson, for example, wrote unequivocally in 1945 that Cage's "continuity
devices"-i.e., motivic transformation and counterpoint-"are those of the Schoenberg
school" (New York Herald Tribune, Jan. 22, 1945). Three years later Schoenberg's influence was so much in evidence to Aaron Copland that he wrote: "Stylistically [Cage's
music] stems from Balinese and Hindu musics, and more recently [!] from Arnold Schoenberg" ("The New 'School' of American Composers," New York Times Magazine, March
14, 1948, 54).
3. See especially "John Cage and Roger Reynolds: A Conversation," Musical Quarterly
65 (October 1979): 573.
4. See Feldman's Darmstadt lecture for 1984, in Walter Zimmermann, comp. and ed.,
Morton Feldman Essays (Kerpen: Beginner Press, 1985), 189. Cf. "H. C. E. (Here Comes
Everybody): Morton Feldman in conversation with Peter Gena," in Peter Gena and
Jonathan Brent, comps. and eds., A john Cage Reader in Celebration of His 70th Birthday
(New York: Peters, 1982), 54-58.
5. A recent and typical secondary use of the statement attributed to Schoenberg
appears in Paul Griffiths, Modern Music: A Concise History from Debussy to Boulez (New
York: Thames and Hudson, 1986), 116: "Schoenberg's verdict [on Cage] was plain: 'He's
not a composer, he's an inventor-of genius.' "
6. For Cage's family background and early schooling, see especially Robert Stevenson,
"John Cage on His 70th Birthday: West Coast Background," Inter-American Music Review
5 (Fall 1982): 3-17. On Cage's early interest in composition, see his comments in Calvin
Tomkins, The Bride and the Bachelors: The Heretical Courtship in Modern Art (New York:
Viking Press, 1965), 80-81. On his New Music Society performance see the reminiscences
quoted in Rita Mead, Henry Cowell's New Music 1925-1936: The Society, the Music Editions,
and the Recordings (Ann Arbor: UMI Research Press, 1981), 228; cf. Tomkins The Bride
and the Bachelors, 83. For Cowell's recollections of his early experiences with Cage, see
"Current Chronicle," Musical Quarterly 38 (January 1952): 152.
7. See Henry Cowell, "Who Is the Greatest Living Composer?' Northwest Musical
Herald 7 (March-April 1933): 7. The letter concerning Cage's wish to study with Schoenberg is transcribed in William George, "Adolph Weiss" (Ph.D diss., University of Iowa,
1971), 267-69. George was permitted to transcribe 119 letters from Weiss's personal
collection for this dissertation. Included are six undated letters from Cage to Weiss
(hereafter referred to as Cage to Weiss I-VI), to which George has attempted to affix
tentative dates. Internal evidence in the letters that can be corroborated relatively easily
suggests that George's dates for these letters are too early. My own dates, based on this
internal evidence as well as a careful collation of reminiscences, are:
I.
11.
111.
IV.
V.
VI.

March 1934
March 30, 1935
April 1935
late April 1935
late May 1935
1936

Despite the lack of dates on these letters, their dateability makes them important keys
to the chronology of Cage's studies during these years. Most of the published chronologies of Cage's work appear to have been based on his reminiscences, which sometimes
falter in the light of contemporary documentation. Throughout this article, where my
dates differ from published chronologies, I have tried to reconstruct from often contradictory evidence what appears to be the most logical sequence of events. A thorough

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137

chronology based on documentary evidence is being produced by Cage's biographer,

Frans van Rossum.
8. See especially Henry Cowell, "Four Little Known Modem Composers," Aesthete
Magazine 1 (August 1928): 19-20. Weiss had also helped negotiate the sale of the rights
to Schoenberg's Klavierstffck, op. 33b, to Cowell, who published it in the N e w Music
Quarterly (April 1932).
9. Modern Music 9 (March-April 1932): 99-107.
10. Schoenberg to Weiss, Nov. 28, 1933, in George, "Adolph Weiss," 283-84. Schoenberg may also have been concerned that his English would be too poor for some students.
11. Schoenberg remarked that Weiss "is not a good business man. But has a man's
music to show to the contrary?"-Schoenberg to Minna Lederman, March 7, 1937,
reprinted in Lederman, The Life and Death of a Small Magazine (Modern Music, 19241946) (New York: Institute for the Study of American Music, 1983), 165.
12. Cage to Weiss I, 268.
13. Cage to William George, February 14, 1965, in George, "Adolph Weiss," 47.
Compare this with Weiss, "Lyceum of Schoenberg," 103.
14. Cage to Peter Yates, December 24, 1940, signed typescript in Peter Yates Papers,
Mandeville Department of Special Collections, University of California at San Diego.
15. See Cage to Michael Hicks, Dec. 4, 1988. This source consists of two parts: (I) a
letter from Cage, and (11) marginal notes on an earlier draft of this article.
16. Cage to Weiss, 11, 309. See also Cage's remarks in a letter to Dieter Schnebel,
Dec. 11, 1973, in Schnebel's "Disziplinierte Anarchie-Cages seltsames Konsequenzen
aus der Lehre bei Schoenberg," in Ulrich Dibelius, ed., Herausforderung Schb'nberg: Was
die Musik der Jahrhunderts verlnderte (Munich: Carl Hauser, 1974), 152.
17. Accounts of this class show how confusing are the sources for Schoenberg's early
Hollywood days. Pauline Alderman recalls only four students attending-see her "Arnold Schoenberg at USC," Journal of the Arnold Schoenberg Institute 5 (Nov. 1981): 204.
Walter Rubsamen, "Schoenberg in America," Musical Quarterly 37 (Oct. 1951): 471,
mentions five who attended this class, but all but one of these differ from those that
Alderman mentions (Rubsamen cites as his sources for this article Gertrud Schoenberg,
Adolph Weiss, Richard Hoffmann, Leonard Stein, Gerald Strang, Rudolf Kolisch, and
Simon Carfagno). Warren Langlie, "Arnold Schoenberg as a Teacher" (Ph.D diss., University of California at Los Angeles, 1960), 30-32, writes that there were six students
in the class. Schoenberg wrote in November 1934 that his class had ten students, though
he does not mention their names. See "Circular to My Friends on My Sixtieth Birthday:
September 13, 1934" (written Nov. 25, 1934), in Leonard Stein, ed., Style and Idea:
Selected Writings of Arnold Schoenberg (Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California
Press, 1984), 28. The class rolls on file at the Schoenberg Institute unfortunately contain
none from 1934-36, the years during which Cage recalls that he studied with Schoenberg.
18. See Cage in Schnebel, "Disziplinierte Anarchie," 151-52; also Cage quoted in
Paul Hertelendy, "John Cage rolls dice at Cabrillo Music Festival," San Jose Mercury,
Aug, 19, 1982, p. 6D. Cage to Weiss V, 314, makes it clear that the small counterpoint
class Cage recalls was the three-student class Schoenberg held after the spring 1935
analysis class.
19. Alderman, "Arnold Schoenberg at USC," 206.
20. See the documentation of this trip cited in Frans van Rossum to Michael Hicks,
July 22, 1989.
21. Cage to Weiss 11, 309: "Schoenberg is giving a class in analysis, the fee for which
is quite small; and since I have a job now in scientific research for a company my father
started, I am able to attend this class."
22. Schnebel, "Disziplinierte Anarchie," 152-53; cf. Cage, "Mosaic," 538.
23. Cage to Weiss IV, 311.
24. Cage to Weiss IV, 312.

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25. Compare Cage to Weiss V, 314, with Schoenberg, "Everyday Diary" (1935), May 1,
holograph in Schoenberg Institute. Like most of Schoenberg's "diaries:' this book contains few entries, making it difficult to say how much of Schoenberg's daily schedule
found its way into them. In any case, this May 1, 1935 meeting is the only private
appointment with Cage that Schoenberg recorded in his diaries.
26. Cage to Weiss V, 314. Cage goes on to boast to Weiss that he is doing work
superior to the other two pupils because "I examine the possibilities as completely as
I can."
27. The quotes used here for this oft-repeated anecdote are from "John Cage Interviewed by Jeff Goldberg," Transatlantic Review 55/56 (May 1976): 103-4. Cf. Tomkins,
The Bride and the Bachelors, 84-85.
28. Cage in Richard Kostelanetz, "Conversation with John Cage," in his John Cage
(New York: Praeger, 1970), 13. Cage's subsequent free "lessons" apparently consisted
of Schoenberg's classes only, not private sessions. Cage has not mentioned having any
private lessons with Schoenberg as such, but has referred to some dinner discussions
with Schoenberg and has recorded one anecdote from such an occasion. (See Schnebel,
"Disziplinierte Anarchie," 152, and Cage, A Year from Monday, 45.) Leonard Stein, in a
letter to the author, May 19, 1988, recalls that "although I . . . assisted [Schoenberg] a
good deal of the time. . . both at the university and at his home, I never saw Cage at
Schoenberg's home."
29. "The Task of the Teacher" (1950), Style and Idea, 388.
30. Cage, For the Birds, 71; cf. Leonard Stein to Michael Hicks, May 19, 1988.
31. Cage, Silence (Cambridge: M. I. T. Press, 1967), 265-66; also, "Mosaic," 537-38.
32. "Mosaic," 537.
33. Silence, 271.
34. Cage, A Year from Monday, 46.
35. See Schnebel, "Disziplinierte Anarchie," 152.
36. See Schoenberg, "To Whom It May Concern," Jan. 31, 1947, signed typescript in
Leroy Robertson Papers, University of Utah Manuscript Archives; Schoenberg to Elizabeth Sprague Coolidge, Aug. 3, 1936, in Arnold Schoenberg, Letters, ed. Erwin Stein
(Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1987), 200. Cf. Alderman,
"Schoenberg at USC," 207, and Leonard Stein's remarks in "A Schoenberg Centennial
Symposium at Oberlin College," Journal of the Arnold Schoenberg Institute 8 (June 1984):
61-62.
37. See Calvin Tomkins, "Profiles: Figure in an Imaginary Landscape [an earlier version
of what appeared in The Bride and the Bachelors], New Yorker, Nov. 28, 1964, 74.
38. Cage to George, Feb. 14, 1965, in George, "Adolph Weiss," 48.
39. Stein to Hicks, May 19, 1988; cf. Schnebel, "Disziplinierte Anarchie," 152-53.
Cage to Hicks, Dec. 4, 1988 (11), gives a different version of this incident: "He refused
to look at it & I think it was not the Allemande but the piece (Sonata) for two Voices."
40. Cage to Hertelendy, "John Cage rolls dice. . ." On the Mahler connection, see
Dika Newlin, Schoenberg Remembered: Diaries and Recollections (1938-76) (New York:
Pendragon Press, 1980), 197.
41. "John Cage interviewed by Jeff Goldberg," 104.
42. Tomkins, "Profiles," 74.
43. In one instance Cage even rebuked a local impresario for billing Stravinsky as
"the world's greatest composer" in the very city where Schoenberg lived. See Jeff
Goldberg, "John Cage Interview: Cage on Everything," Soho Weekly News, Sept. 12,
1974. Cf. "Mosaic," 536.
44. "The Blessing of the Dressing" (1948), in Style and Idea, 385.
45. See the accounts of this episode in For the Birds, 71; Schnebel, "Disziplinierte
Anarchie:' 160; cf. "Mosaic," 536.

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139

46. The details of this class are taken from Alexander Schreiner Reminisces (Salt Lake
City: Publishers Press, 1984), 55-56.
47. Cage to Weiss VI, 317.
48. Cage quoted in Tomkins, "Profiles," 74. See the slightly different account in
A Year from Monday, 114.
49. On the chronology of this period, see Stevenson, "John Cage on His 70th Birthday,"
9-10.
50. See "The Future of Music: Credo," first published in Silence, 4.
51. Cage, "For More New Sounds," Modern Music 19 (May-June 1942): 245.
52. Cage, "The East in the West," Modern Music 23 (Apr. 1946): 111-12.
53. Cage quoted in Time 53 (Jan. 24, 1949): 36.
54. Peter Yates, "A Collage of American Composers-Part 5," Arts and Architecture
76 (Mar. 1959): 6.
55. "The East in the West," 115.
56. "Defense of Satie" (lecture given summer 1948) in Kostelanetz, John Cage, 82.
See also Cage's "Forerunners of Modern Music" (originally published in the Tiger's Eye,
Mar. 1949), in Silence, 64: "The twelve-tone row offers bricks but no plan."
57. Cage, "Contempory Music Festivals Are Held in Italy:' Musical America 69 (June
1949): 32.
58. "Linear Counterpoint," Style and Idea, 290; see also 102-4.
59. "Lectures-Amold SchBnberg University of Southem California Summer 1936,"
June 22, 1936, holograph in Leroy Robertson Papers.
60. Cage's most thorough explanation of his thinking on this is in For the Birds, 45,
75. See also "Mosaic," 539.
61. "Problems of Harmony," Style and Idea, 270.
62. Undated class notes in Leroy Robertson Papers.
63. See Cage's comments in Silence, 18-19; "Mosaic," 537; M: Writings '67-'72 (Middletown, Connecticut: Wesleyan University Press, 1973), 145; Empty Words: Writings '73'78 (Middletown: Wesleyan University Press, 1979), 178; For the Birds, 35-36.
64. Style and Idea, 285; cf. 106-8, 316.
65. See the holograph of this diary in the Schoenberg Institute.
66. Cowell, "Current Chronicle," 124.
67. In vol. 21 (Mar.-Apr. 1944), the Schoenberg seventieth birthday issue, Lou Harrison
reviews prepared piano and percussion music by Cage; cf. vol. 23 (Nov.-Dec. 1944),
which also treats Cage works. Both of these are in the Schoenberg legacy at the Schoenberg Institute; there are no annotations on the Cage reviews.
68. On these incidents, see Tomkins, The Bride and the Bachelors, 88, and Cage to
Yates, December 24, 1940, Yates Papers.
69. Schoenberg to Roy Hams, May 17, 1945, in Letters, 233-34.
70. "The Blessing of the Dressing," Style and Idea, 386.
71. "The Task of the Teacher," Style and Idea, 389.
72. Yates, "Two Albums by John Cage-Part 2," Arts and Architecture 77 (Apr. 1960):
12.
73. Yates, Twentieth Century Music: Its Evolution from the End of the Harmonic Era into
The Present Era of Sound (New York: Pantheon Books, 1967), 243-44. See also Yates's
"A Sampling of John Cage," paper delivered before the New York Chapter of the
American Musicological Society, Oct. 13, 1973, typescript in Yates papers. In this source
Yates quotes several of Cage's contemporaries who considered his work something other
than "compositional."
74. Frances Yates to Michael Hicks, Sept. 17, 1988.
75. Petes Yates to Saul Barron (undated), typescript in Yates Papers.
76. See Cage's embellishments in "John Cage Interviewed by Jeff Goldberg," 104.
77. Schnebel, "Disziplinierte Anarchie," 158. To date I have been unable to locate in

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the considerable Schoenberg-Scherchen correspondence any evidence of such an interchange.

78. Cage to Hicks, Dec. 4, 1988 (I).
79. Yates to Cage, Aug. 8, 1953, original in Cage's possession. I thank Frans van
Rossum for bringing this source to light.
80. "George Gershwin" (1938), in Style and Idea, 476.
81. Style and Idea, 240.
82. "John Cage interviewed by Jeff Goldberg," 104.
83. "John Cage rolls dice."
84. For the Birds, 15.
85. "John Cage interviewed by Jeff Goldberg," 104.
86. For what follows, see "John Cage and Roger Reynolds: A Conversation," 593;
also Schnebel, "Disziplinierte Anarchie," 155, 160.